Sure, the obvious answer is that it is required on your degree plan. But FAR more than that, whether you are CVEN or any other major, and whether you are in the structures or the environmental option, or a graduate student, this material will affect your grades in several follow-on class, and the material covered will also show up on the Fundamentals of Engineering exam that you must take become a registered professional engineer.
Click here and scroll down to Exam Specifications. Pick any field of your choice, say for example FE Civil, and note that the entire section 6 lists nothing but material covered in this class. If you leave this class with a C, you are in for problems. This material is critical.
You will also find that the material is used extensively in your later classes. CVEN students, and others, will take Strength of Materials, and CVEN 345 Structural Analysis. For many CVEN students you will also take concrete design, steel design, geotechnical classes, construction classes, and others. Your grades in these classes will be massively influenced in your ability for solve for reactions, internal forces in trusses, moments inside of beams, etc. Every time I teach 345 I find that the students who don’t pass do so because they can’t do the things taught in CVEN 221. And those who don’t make A’s do so because they do so poorly in the 221 material used in their later classes.
A word to the wise: Your knowledge of the material taught to you in 221 will influence your grades throughout yous remaining college career, and well on into taking an being able to pass the F.E. and P.E exams.
It’s just a fact.
L^3